[adolwyn]

Ok, follow up post here for anyone inclined to read a few words. I've patched together a bit of a workflow from all the resources in here and was hoping someone more experienced in Calibre could look at it and let me know if I have any obvious/helpful things that I've missed and should be doing, or if I'm duplicating or doing anything that isn't needed or could cause problems down the road?

If it's good/reasonable, then maybe it can serve as help to someone down the road who shows up feeling as overwhelmed as I was. haha.

Part Zero: Importing

• Select ten books (just a number that worked for me) from my old, messy Calibre library and copy it to my Calibre wookbench library (deleting from the old library once copied over).
  
• For new books not already in my Calibre library, then I would add them to my workbench (or just my 'clean' Library down the road), and if they aren't already ePub, I would convert them to ePub.

Part One: Checking & Quality Assurance

1. Open each book individually in book editor.

• Check that each book is what I think it should be based on the filename, etc.
• Run the "Check Book" job in the book editor to see if there are errors and fix any that book editor can fix.
• Save each book and close back to the regular Calibre library.

2. Run Quality Check on all ten books at once.
- Quality check items I am using are:

• Missing Container
• Invalid namespaces
• Non-dc: metadata
• Manifest files missing
• Unmanifested files
• Unused CSS files
• Unused image files
• Broken image links
• TOC with < 3 entries
• TOC with broken links
• (not checking hierarchical TOC/flattening as I read somewhere that it was no longer needed?)

3. Run Modify ePub for the books with problems that can be fixed by Modify ePub, making sure the following are checked off:

• Remove unused image files
• Smarten punctuation
• Remove broken image pages
• Remove Adobe resource DRM meta tags
• Update metadata
• Remove non dc: metadata elements
• Remove all metadata jackets (so I can add a fresh one with Polish later on)

Part Two: Individual Books, Metadata, & Covers

1. Bulk remove all tags, ratings, and identifiers from all ten 'workbench' books.
2. Manually add the correct edition isbn or asin based on what's in the book or what's available on Goodreads to each book's identifier field.
3. (sidenote: I tried to use the extract ISBN plugin and it wasn't able to find any ISBN numbers in the 20 books I've done this with so far so I've gone back to manual adding the right ISBN (preferred) or ASIN (if no ISBN is available).
4. In the "Edit Metadata Individually" section, click "download metadata" and get the metadata correct, select a good, higher resolution cover, check that series data is correct.
5. Update the tags with the silly ones I don't want (I wish I could tell Goodreads I never want the audiobook tag ever in a hundred million years), update my Main Genre custom column tag, and my Shelves custom column (used for syncing to Kobo's collections).
6. Ensure each book has a goodreads identifier as part of the metadata download process. If it doesn't, then manually add it for the correct edition.
7. If non-fiction, remove the long subtitle from the title field and put it in the custom subtitle column.
8. Make sure the comments box has a usable summary without any promo/advertising.

Part Three: Finishing
1. Select all ten workbench books, select the "Count Pages" (estimate page/word counts option) - using the ADE estimation as I'm working with ePub and eventually kePub.

2. Move on to Polish books.

• Make sure there's no "original epub" in the book files by going to Remove Books > Remove files of a specific format from selected books.

- In polish, select:

• Smarten punctuation
• Update metadata in the book files
• Update the cover in the book files
• Add/replace metadata as a book jacked page
• Remove unused CSS rules from the book
• Losslessly compress images
• Download external impages
• Upgrade book internals

- Polish the ten books.

3. Make sure all books open and look ok after polishing. If so, remove the original epub that is created.

4. If everything is good, select all ten workbench books and move them to the "clean" Library (deleting from the workbench after copy).

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Other setup items:
1. I have KoboUtilities set up with the following save template:

{author_sort:.1}/{author}/{series:||/}{title} - {series}{series_index:0>2s| [|] - }{author}

I have the driver set up as the instructions show to have the subtitle show main genre and # of pages and it seems to be working to upload to Kobo and to download the Kobo information into those custom columns.

2. I'll eventually also finish setting up Goodreads sync, but I have at least connected my goodreads account with the plugin.

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So, is this a reasonable workflow for someone whose goal is to have accurate metadata, a well-formatted eBook to send to my Kobo, and a library with good organization, tagging, and series info?

Have I missed anything? Am I duplicating my efforts anywhere? Should I be doing anything else?

Thank you to anyone who read all that and is willing to provide any feedback, ideas, suggestions, or improvements!